More cities are embracing accessible pedestrian signals but blind Americans say it's not enough

For decades, Ann Brash rode the train into downtown Chicago from suburban La Grange, then relied on her orientation and mobility skills to traverse city streets as a blind person working as a claims specialist for the U.S. Social Security Administration.

Chicago’s lack of accessible pedestrian signals – devices that emit sounds or vibrations to let visually impaired and deafblind people know when to cross – had been a long source of frustration and fear for Brash, and around 15 years ago, she began writing letters to city officials pleading with them to install such devices.

By 2019, when Brash was nearly hit by a bus while stepping into a crosswalk, barely 11 of Chicago’s nearly 2,700 signalized crosswalks were equipped with such devices, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit filed against the city. 

“We’re not as safe or sure as we were,” Brash said. “What is happening is that the landscape is changing. They’re doing all sorts of things to make it safer, but it’s not helping us.”

Brash is now one of three visually impaired plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and challenging Chicago’s lack of accessible pedestrian signals. Advocates say the case could have national implications, coming on the heels of a federal court ruling in December that will require New York City to install accessible pedestrian signals at nearly 10,000 intersections over the next decade.

“The courts are sending a loud and clear message that when state and local departments of transportation are upgrading, they must provide forms of effective communication for people who are blind and low vision,” said Clark Rachfal, advocacy director for the American Council of the Blind, based in Alexandria, Virginia. “Cities have not been designed to be accessible. This is a violation of our civil rights.”

Rachfal said heightened awareness of the issue is especially important in light of last year’s passage of the landmark Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But as in New York, the Chicago case could prove transformative for the nation's third-largest city.

This week, a federal judge granted class-action status in that lawsuit, also filed on behalf of the American Council of the Blind of Metropolitan Chicago. The suit alleges that the city’s pedestrian planning ignores the safety of blind and visually impaired pedestrians, in violation of federal and state civil rights laws.

“When a public entity chooses to signalize an intersection and does not provide technology available for many years now to make it accessible, it is engaging in discrimination,” said Jelena Kolic, senior staff attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, which filed the suit along with private counsel. “People had written to the city for years. It was finally time to do something other than just ask them to rectify the issue.”

Kristen Cabanban, a spokeswoman for the City of Chicago, said the city does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Relying on traffic cues when signals aren't available

The accessible pedestrian signals in use today began appearing in the 1990s, but not everyone considered them necessary.

“Our own position is that audible pedestrian signals can be helpful but are not necessary to independent travel by blind people,” said Chris Danielsen of the National Federation of the Blind, based in Baltimore.

The organization advises visually impaired people that when such signals aren’t present, which Danielsen said is most of the time, to focus on sounds of traffic to decide when it’s safe to cross.

Danielsen, who is blind himself, said that since he can’t see walk-light countdowns, he might wait a full light cycle to pass before crossing.

“This is one reason why a sighted person might observe a blind person waiting for a while to cross an intersection,” he said. “It isn’t that we can’t cross the intersection safely without help but that we are waiting for perpendicular traffic to stop and parallel traffic to start moving, to ensure that we have the maximum allowed time to cross.”

Accessible pedestrian signals, especially those that announce the time remaining, can reduce such waits by giving blind people a firm idea of how much time they have to cross, Danielsen said.

Still, he said, individuals are advised to prioritize cues from traffic sounds “because unfortunately, drivers sometimes behave unpredictably and disregard signals themselves.”

Raquel "Raqi" Gomez, who manages Adaptations, the blind technology retail store operated by San Francisco's Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, agreed.

"I always tell people, always pay attention to what the traffic is doing, because people might run a light," said Gomez. At the same time, she was pleased when the city installed an accessible pedestrian signal at an intersection she used near a freeway onramp, where she had trouble hearing.

"When they're there, they're useful," she said. "But it's not a substitute for reading the traffic."

Blake Lindsay, outreach and communications manager for Envision Dallas, an employment and services provider for blind and low-vision people in North Texas, knows how beneficial such signals can be.

About 15 years ago, when Lindsay worked in downtown Addison, a suburb just north of Dallas, he asked town officials to install accessible pedestrian signals along his short route to work.

“I said, I work and live here, and it would benefit me to walk this third of a mile,” Lindsay said. “And they put those crossings in. Most cities are really cooperative. It’s just not tops on their list to do.”

'It's even less safe to cross than it was before'

 But for Brash, the city’s failure to prioritize such signals was abundantly clear.

According to attorney Kolic, Chicago has doubled the number of installed accessible pedestrian signals to more than 20 since the suit was filed, a negligible increase for the city’s blind and low-vision population.

“If they have 20 now, I don’t have a clue where there are,” Brash said.

Now retired and in her late 60s, she still occasionally travels into the city for medical appointments, or to go to the gym.

Whenever she goes somewhere unfamiliar, Brash said it’s ideal to have a sighted person with her the first time around. Otherwise, she’ll wait on a corner until someone comes by who she can ask for help. Sometimes, if she’s somewhat familiar with an area, she’ll go out of her way to take a route she knows to get closer to where she’s going.

Rachfal, of the American Council of the Blind, said the orientation and mobility training he and other visually impaired people often learn is critical in terms of navigating their environments.

“But what has changed," he said, "is that signalized intersections are becoming more complicated over the years as technology at intersections has involved."

Newer crosswalk signals give pedestrians a head start, signaling them to cross a few seconds before lights turn green for parallel vehicle traffic and making them more visible as they step into the street.

“But me being blind, I don’t have that head start,” Rachfal said. “So I’m at a disadvantage. I’m more vulnerable because that signal is not accessible to me. And I’ve lost valuable time. You’re taking folks who are more vulnerable and exposing them to greater risk by not having these signals available at intersections.”

Blind pedestrians, then, are literally left behind. For Brash, that’s what makes accessible pedestrian signals “extremely crucial.”

“We not only lose time on the crossing, which is a problem, but some drivers think we’re not going to cross and so they turn,” she said. “So it’s even less safe to cross than it was before.”

Across the country, progress in sight

Kolic, of Disability Rights Advocates, said as her team examined accessible pedestrian practices nationwide, some cities did stand out as more mindful than others – notably Seattle, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Several had committed to installing accessible signals as part of all new pedestrian installations, while San Francisco had also retrofitted signals at existing intersections.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a single city that’s doing this completely right,” Kolic said. But given Chicago’s size, “it’s doing abysmally bad. It’s densely populated, there’s high traffic volume and elevated train tracks that interfere with people’s ability to hear traffic.”

While many blind people have long resigned themselves to negotiating travel without such signals, “that is not right, regardless of whether there are people willing to find a way around it," Kolic said.

Sarah Malaier, senior advisor for public policy and research at the American Foundation for the Blind in Arlington, Virginia, said pandemic-related social changes have opened up an opportunity to focus on accessible pedestrian signals and accessibility.

"It's really opened up a space for thinking about pedestrian safety since there's more people moving through the streets on foot or on bikes," Malaier said.

An informal survey of visually impaired older adults found that a quarter of them planned to relocate from their urban settings for more pedestrian-friendly environs, "which shows a demand for walkability," she said. 

The New York case and progress thus far in Chicago, she said, demonstrate a growing awareness of the needs of all populations. 

"There's a growing recognition that building accessibility and effective communication into our infrastructure is really important in terms of equity and equality," she said.

Rachfal, of the American Council of the Blind, said while many cities have processes through which citizens can request the installation of accessible pedestrian signals, many transportation departments are backlogged, or cities are not dedicating the necessary resources for infrastructure upgrades.

“No one is doing it perfectly,” he said. “But when you make the city more walkable and accessible, it benefits everyone.”